"Did he do it, Charlotte? Did he kill those women?"
"Aw, shit, man! Will you lemme alone? My old man's dead, can't you understand? He may not have bin worth a turd to you, but he meant a fuck of a lot to me." The rush was wearing off.
"Try me," I said.
But she didn't say a thing.
"I'll pay you the price of a cap."
"Don't con me."
I counted out seventy dollars and placed it on the table between us. She knocked it onto the floor, but then had second thoughts. I knew I was sure to win the game that junkies always lose.
"Two caps," she said finally with this smirk on her face.
"Sorry," I said. "No can do. This is from my own pocket. It's me as man wants to know, not me as cop."
"Know what?" she asked — and I knew I had her.
"Did you ever fuck him? John Lincoln Hardy?"
Her eyes opened wide and they were shining like stars. "Did I what?" she asked of me, incredulous.
"Did you ever fuck him?"
"Come on! He was my old man."
"Word on the street is he wired you. You peddled your ass for him. Word is he beat you once or twice, beat you up real bad. A girl doesn't need to screw her pimp, you and I know that. Once again, Charlotte: Did you ever fuck him?"
"Yeah, I fucked him."
"Often?"
"Every night. Johnnie was a man."
"Did he come?"
She frowned at me in wonderment, then tossed away one hand. "Everyone comes for me," she said, getting up from the table. She bent down for the money on the floor and stuffed it in the waistband of her jeans. Then she turned to leave, stopped, and this is what she said:
"That's the last of the answers, fuzz, and I don't want you comin' back. But here's somethin' for free. Johnnie was a good man and he was a hell of a lover. He was the one who hooked me on junk, kept me in junk — and he was the only guy in my life who ever made me feel wanted. Do you understand what it means to need to feel wanted? You think I was just some sweet girl working in a Dairy Queen who got fucked over by some black stud who beat her black and blue." She sat down again, and leaned across the table towards me. "Maybe I deserved it. I stole from him once, you see, when I needed some junk. I stole something precious. I stole this wooden mask. So he beat me, and beat me and beat me. But I loved the guy and you killed him. And I'd do it all over again the exact same way tomorrow."
"Why'd you sell the mask? And not his Polaroid camera?"
"Camera? Don't make me laugh," Charlotte Clarke said looking puzzled. "What would Johnnie have done with that? He never owned no camera." Then she got up and walked away.
I let her go: she'd told me what I wanted.
She got another fix and I got a hundred caps' worth.
But I knew that when that junk hit her vein she'd see it the other way around.
And that was good.
At least someone would be happy.
I found them in the courthouse coffee shop down at 222 Main. They were making cop-talk as I sat down at the table.
"So she told me she stole the lighter because she was so nervous about stealing the other goods that she needed a cigarette, but didn't have a light," Rick Scarlett said.
"We all smiled at that one and William Tipple said: "Not bad, but I think Mad Dog gets the prize. Anyone dissenting? Okay, Rabid, there you go. Six quarters."
"What is this?" I asked. "Some sort of reunion?"
"Nope." Bill Tipple said, "just coincidence. Scarlett, Spann and I are down here to speak to the Department of Justice prosecutor about more charges against Rackstraw. We want him for both importing cocaine and for conspiracy McDonald and Lewis are here for an evidence interview on the US application to extradite Matthew Paul Pitt. Mad Dog Rabidowski has a theft under trial."
"Ain't life a bore," Rabidowski said, "since they disbanded the Squad. I wish we hadn't caught him."
"Maybe we didn't," I said.
At that moment, with that comment, I learned just how Colonel Tibbets must have felt when he dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima.
So I told them what bothered me. Why would a man who has a normal sexual release go out and rape and kill women yet never have an orgasm? Why wouldn't he just kill them if it was a psychological thing? Wasn't the killer more likely to be a man in a frenzy unable to ever come? Maybe he picked up syphilis and hated every woman.
My theory wasn't welcome.
First Scarlett looked at me strangely, then he got up and left.
The others for a number of reasons soon followed suit.
I was left alone at the table with a rapidly cooling cup of coffee. I'd hit a dead end and knew it.
As the man says: Nothing in life is ten out of ten.
Is man not lost? Now I ask you: isn't that a hell of a question?
Is that why you started drinking, Dad?
If it is I understand.
It was as I was returning the Headhunter files to the "morgue" that the negative slipped out of one of them and dropped onto the floor. I bent down to pick it up.
I had decided already that going on was just a waste of time; the investigation was over and Genevieve had surmounted her problem. Besides, I had other work to do. Crime waits for no one.
Strangely, I had completely forgotten about the picture. Perhaps it was repression, something along the line that Dr. Ruryk had described. But the moment I held it up to the light I knew I would take it home.
At the present moment it's over there, sitting on my en-larger. I feel a little queasy but I know I'll blow it up. My life has been reduced to mental masochism.
Can you hear me. Father? Are you out there listening?
You remember that day you spanked me cause I lipped off our neighbor? How angry I got at you? I told you you were no good 'cause you couldn't hold a job.
Well. Father, I'm sorry. Believe me. I wish I'd never said that.
I've atoned a million times since, hoping you were listening.
I killed you. didn't I? It was what I said that day that made you get that job?
If it weren't for me you'd never have been on that plane to Toronto, would you?
I'm so sorry. Dad. 'Cause now I'm lost too.
I guess we're both a couple of fools. Me with my obsession. You with your booze.
I feel pathetic, Father. Can you somehow forgive me? Believe me I'm doing penance.
Watch me blow it up!
There, it's done.
I put the negative into the carrier of my condenser enlarger. I checked the easel illumination and made an exposure. Now the picture of the head is a hundred times normal size.
Look at it with me, Father. I don't want to be alone.
I wish you could turn the cover over like you did before.
God, how a negative gives tone separation. It's not like a Polaroid. Look at her face, at the rictus of terror frozen into her muscles. Look at her skin stretched tight and gray and the bulge of her rolled up eyes. Look at her hair, how black it is, all matted in hanks and strands. Look at her mouth open to scream, look at her swollen tongue. Look at the way her nostrils have flared to let out the trickles of blood. And look at how shreds of skin from her neck curl around the pole like snakes.
Hey, wait a minute. That's new. The pole's in a bucket of sand. All of the other pictures ended part way down the stick.
Yes, now I can see what the killer has done.
The Headhunter returns with his trophy and puts it down on the ground. He shovels a pail full of sand and carries it and the head inside. Once there he places the bucket in front of a pinned-up sheet. A pole is stuck into the sand, and the head is rammed down onto the pole. Then he snaps the picture.
Do you think he tried to buy more Polaroid film, saw the trap and therefore changed to an undeveloped negative''